Wineducation: Party Wines 3: festivals

The Festive Season and parties

Christmas and New Years Parties often focus less on wine as a discussion point and more as a vehicle for inducing fun. With that in mind a host should consider it important to not over-buy serious wines but to have a greater volume of the tier 1 type wines.

That doesn’t mean you want to put out the cheapest wine you can find, as with all things there is often a very logical reason why cheap wines are cheap. That’s a future article, right there.

Talk to your wine merchant to find out what are good value wines. The Wine Man because he holds 2 WSET qualifications and over 20 years experience of wines from every wine growing nation. Not just French wine or Italian but all wines – from everywhere. The Wine Man can ask questions about what you like and what you know rather and match this to an almost unlimited amount of knowledge any range of regions, countries, grapes, styles and prices.

OK, so you have located some low cost good wine but that doesn’t mean you have to scrimp on variety, as there are plenty of yummy, accessible wines around in the lower tiers. Here are few cases we have put together with Christmas in mind from tiers 1, 2 and 3.

If you were thinking which wine might I take along to someone else’s party, a new etiquette is in order. You want it to taste nice. You want it to impress someone. You want it to be low cost in case it gets drunk before you see it again or worse not opened at all.

Here are some wines to cover all those bases. Again, I have ordered them from lower to higher tier. In the first group we have first tier wines; white then red. In second gaggle are 2nd tier, and so on.